Perfection is the natural consequence of eternity: wait long enough, and anything will realize its potential. Coal becomes diamonds, sand becomes pearls, apes become men. It's simply not given to us, in one lifetime, to see those consummations, and so every failure becomes a reminder of death.

Love lost is a special kind of failure, I think. It's a reminder that some consummations, no matter how devoutly wished for, never come; that some apes will never be men, not in all the world's ages.

Never invest yourself in anything so deeply that its failure could cost you your happiness.

The two hardest things to contemplate in life ... are failure and age; those are one and the same.

I'd begun to realize that there was an unspoken predjudice among book-learned people, a secret conviction they all seemed to share, that life as we know it is an imperfect vision of reality, and that only art, like a pair of reading glasses can correct it.

Two people who think they're in love can find out, when left alone, exactly how little they know about each other.

A son is a promise that time makes to a man,the guarantee every father receives that whatever he holds dear will someday be considered foolish, and that person he loves best in the world will misunderstand him.